PESHAWAR: Governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Shaukatullah has revealed that Pakistanis may face a complete travel ban for Hajj and Umrah due to failure of the country to contain the spread of the poliovirus.

In an exclusive chat with The News, he revealed that during the last 18 months, Pakistan had infected many other countries with the poliovirus. He feared that the Saudi government might impose complete travel ban on Hajj and Umrah of our people.

â€œPoliovirus has gone from here (Pakistan) to Syria, Egypt and Gaza and our people will not be allowed to proceed for Hajj and Umrah if the public didnâ€™t change their attitude towards polio vaccination within two or three years,â€ he said.[/b]

Raising question marks over the poor communication and awareness building strategies of the highly paid officials of the polio programme, the governor said there was a lack of awareness and no realisation in the masses about the significance of polio vaccine. â€œOur people donâ€™t realise what they are doing to their children by denying them their right to polio vaccines,â€ remarked the governor.

Responding to a question regarding the channel through which this shocking news of complete travel ban by Saudi Arabia was communicated to the governor, he said that it has officially been communicated to them. â€œI am not saying this on my own. What I said has been communicated to us that our people will not be allowed to go for Hajj and Umrah if poliovirus is not eliminated here,â€ he stated.

Governor Shaukatullah felt that it was unfortunate that the next generations would be born handicapped, but even then nobody had the realisation regarding the gravity of the situation.

Very true bro...hope now some Paki fanboys are in their senses to know that Pakistan a servant of US-Nato and maid of China is no position to provide nuclear umbrella or nuke other nuclear power for the sake of those arabs.....

Very true bro...hope now some Paki fanboys are in their senses to know that Pakistan a servant of US-Nato and maid of China is no position to provide nuclear umbrella or nuke other nuclear power for the sake of those arabs.....

Click to expand...

Pakistanis are already aware of this that they are getting grind between USA and China which has created so many internal problems for them. Its really sad that they still don't want to understand all this and stop enmity with India .

Time for India to take similar steps. India worked a lot to eradicate Polio from the all over India & therefore we should not allow free movement of Pakistanis into India. Only individuals with medical certificate confirming a Polio vaccination should be given VISA to India.